Security enhancement schemes for wireless networks, 2008

Item — Call Number: MU Thesis Gue

Identifier: b2090075

Scope and Contents

From the Collection:

The collection consists of theses written by students enrolled in the Monmouth University graduate Computer Science program. The holdings are primarily bound print documents that were submitted in partial fulfillment of requirements for the Master of Science degree.

Dates

Creation: 2008

Creator

Guelzim, Tarik (Author, Person)
Obaidat, Mohammad S. (Mohammad Salameh), 1952- (Thesis advisor, Person)

Conditions Governing Access

All analog collection holdings are limited to library use only.

Collection holdings may not be borrowed through Interlibrary Loan.

Researchers seeking to photocopy collection materials must complete an Application to Photocopy Form.

Any photocopying of collection materials will be performed by the Monmouth University Library staff.

The Monmouth University Library reserves the right to limit or refuse duplication requests subject to the condition of collection materials and/or restrictions imposed by the collection creators or by the United States Copyright Act.

Permission to examine, or copy, collection materials does not imply permission to publish or quote. It is the responsibility of the researcher to obtain such permissions from both the copyright holder and Monmouth University.

Full Extent

1 Items (print book) : 178 pages ; 8.5 x 11.0 inches (28 cm).

Language of Materials

English

Additional Description

Abstract

The IEEE 802.11 standard is becoming the most popular and efficient network topology deployed today. Providing and ensuring the security of wireless network is essential part to its continuous growth. Goals such as confidentiality and trust imply that every data transmitted by each user stays known only to the communicating parties. Authorization of users is also a very important aspect of network integrity. There exist mechanisms defined by the Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) protocol that enable such functionality; however, recent attacks on such system showed that these mechanisms can be defied. In this thesis, we propose two new schemes. The first employs a neural network decision engine that restricts network access to mobile nodes whose phyiscal location is within a threshold distance from the wireless access point or the controller of the network. This method gives an extra layer of security and allows enforcing policies by which network access is only allowed from a certain section of the network. The second tackles the disassociation packet security flaw by which a malicious attacker can disconnect all network users by injecting two or more false management frames into the network. Our scheme proposes the use of digital signatures as a mean to ensure the authenticity, integrity and validity of these frames.

Performance evaluation results showed that our Neural Network scheme has a 95% accuracy rate which is higher than existing schemes in this field. In addition, evaluation of the Counter Disassociation Mechanism (CDM) scheme showed that a higher security enhancement is feasible without introducing a big overhead by using MD5-RSA as the digital signature alogrithm.

Partial Contents

Table of figures -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Previous related work and literature review -- 3. A novel neurocomputing-based scheme to authenticate WLAN users employing distance proximity threshold -- 4. New wireless security scheme: counter diassociation method (CDM) in wireless local area networks -- 5. Conclusions and recommendations -- Index -- References -- Appendices.